Posts Tagged ‘kitchen garden’

Today’s gardening tots are the adorable Audrey and Mo, ages 3.5 and nearly-2, of In the Kitchen with Audrey. The garden is a wonderful way to show kids where their food comes from. But where do lamps come from?

Audrey’s mom writes, “I had no idea when planning to have children with a witty, sarcastic certified genius that he would convince our children that light bulbs grow lamps. I think he decided to do it on a lark. We were finishing dinner when he announced his intentions to the girls. Our neighbor came to watch. It was during the time when we were putting in our real garden and I think he just wanted to be a part of something.”

Your turn! If you’d like to share a photo of your kids in the garden for a future “Worm Wednesday” post, please e-mail it to foodietots@gmail.com, &/or leave a link to a recent gardening post in the comments and show us what your kids are growing!

Our first year kitchen garden experiment didn’t yield a whole lot in terms of edibles, but the pride in the four-year-old’s face as he told people (family, neighbors, total strangers in the garden store…) about his garden made it all worthwhile. He may not have liked the sungold cherry tomatoes, but he loved to pick them whenever we had company and pass them around.

This year we’ve got a head start with strawberries already flowering! A rhubarb plant I was sure I had killed — let’s just say it never quite made it out of its plastic pot on the deck last summer… — grew back this spring and is more than ready for a permanent home. I tasked the boy with choosing his four plants for this year, and here’s what he drew:

In case you’re wondering, that’s a hot dog plant between the sunflowers and strawberries. The fourth plant is peas.

We’ll plant the sunflowers elsewhere around the yard, and together we’ve come up with the following list for our garden bed:

strawberries

multi-colored carrots

peas (a warm-weather variety this year)

French breakfast radishes (my choice)

cherry tomatoes

basil

peppers

I have a pot on the deck to replant with mint and rosemary, plus my window sill box for the rest of our herbs. I’d also like to put a few berry plants in but we’re still figuring out what to do about our rolling hillside gently-sloping backyard. Also, I’m pretty sure we have a resident groundhog (??) about, as something got through my bunny fence last fall and made of with the carrots while we were out of town.

Allow me to gloat briefly: my son’s favorite vegetable is broccoli. When I serve broccoli, he asks for seconds. When I told him the broccoli in our garden needed to grow a little bigger, he said, “But I really wanted to eat it tonight,” in such a sad voice that I snipped it and steamed it just for him.

how do *you* test broccoli for ripeness?

Now before you resent me too much, let me assure you that there are plenty of green vegetables he won’t touch. Including anything leafy. (I blame myself, for telling him not to eat leaves at the playground when he was a toddler.) But as long as he loves broccoli, we’re eating it once or twice a week. And it’s in season right now at our local farmers markets, along with its cousin cauliflower, squash, Brussels sprouts, beets, apples, pears, those pesky leafy greens, and more root vegetables than you could ever find time to roast.

Did you know that broccoli lowers cholesterol, has high levels of vitamins A & K, and contains folic acid (good for pregnant and nursing mamas)? Ninety percent of the time I just steam broccoli and serve it with butter and sea salt. But if you’re looking to mix things up, or if your little ones aren’t quite as enthusiastic about broccoli, here are some other ideas from around the blogs.

As we traveled down the path of eating more locally, it was hard to escape the feeling that maybe we should try growing some of our own food, too. Because we weren’t planning to stay in our current house as long as we have, I never broke ground for a garden and just made do with an herb pot last summer. We closed on our new house on Friday, though – perfectly timed with the last frost date for our area. So what did we do Saturday? Put in our starter garden bed. (Normal people might pack or move first, but I was afraid it would be too late by the time we got settled in.)

In the past I’ve had a small blueberry bush and a very prolific raspberry patch, so I know I *can* grow something. As we’re expecting baby #2 in just two more months, I tried to start small. We (namely the husband) made a 4’x6’ bed, with 10” wide planks. The bottom is lined with cardboard, and then filled with 6 bags of organic soil and 1 bag of organic compost (the compost was unintentional, I wasn’t paying attention when the garden center employees loaded the car).

I set aside an end row for the boy, and let him pick his crops. Aside from the requested “cheeseburger plant,” we were able to plant the rest of his wishlist: carrots (orange & purple), broccoli, strawberries, and a pumpkin. My rows contain more of the carrots, French radishes, beets, and a low-growing pea, with an open space for cherry tomatoes and peppers to come later. (Why are we gardening? When I showed him my pea seeds, the boy said, “But peas don’t grow on plants! They come from the store!” The husband asked where the store gets them from, and he said, “New York!”)

Of course, I’ve already made a couple rookie mistakes: namely, trying to buy garden supplies on the first day of planting season – and a gorgeous, sunny, mid-60s day to boot. We wound up with fir planks rather than the cedar I wanted – I’d read that cedar is a natural pest deterrent. I can only assume it’s my punishment for going to Home Depot rather than an independent lumber dealer … the characteristically helpful service from Home Depot (note sarcasm) prompted me to proclaim on Facebook that I wanted to take on a new challenge: a year without Home Depot. We did go to an independent garden center for the rest of the supplies (organic soil, seeds, a window box for herbs, and the strawberry plants) – and we have at least two independent hardware stores near the new house which we will be checking out soon. The broccoli and beet seedlings came from our new neighborhood’s farmers market. Between the cost of the wood, organic soil ($14/bag) and those pricey strawberry plants ($3.99/each), I’m not sure we’ll break even on our garden this year. But it’s a learning experience, right?

At any rate, here’s week one of the FoodieTots Kitchen Garden:

See more photos of the construction at Flickr. And stay tuned for progress reports throughout the season.